Foreign ministry under growing hacking attacks

By Chung Min-uck

The websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its overseas missions are under increasingly frequent attacks from hackers.

The number of attempts made to break into the websites of the ministry and diplomatic offices to acquire confidential information tripled over the past five years, said the ministry Tuesday.

In the first three months of this year, the figure reached 1,027. If this pace continues, the ministry said that the total number of hacking attempts on the ministry and its overseas offices will top 4,000 for the first time ever by the end of this year.

The total number of cyber attack attempts stood at 1,309 in 2009 when the ministry began tracking related data. Since then, the figure has grown steadily every year on year to reach 1,941 in 2010, 2,686 in 2011 and 2,381 last year, according to the ministry.

However, the country’s confidential diplomatic documents are safe from such attacks because diplomats use a separate Internet channel to share secret documents, a ministry official said.

“We run the computer network for diplomatic affairs exclusively. Cyber attacks targeting the ministry and overseas missions’ Internet home pages can’t reach the separate channel,” said the official.

Besides the hacking attempts, the number of malignant e-mails sent to diplomats has increased as well since 2009.

In 2009, ministry officials received 24 of those e-mails, while this year, the figure is expected to reach 576.

Meanwhile, to prevent leakage of confidential information, officials at the ministry are encouraged to leave their smartphones outside meeting rooms when conducting important meetings.